


Maybe There's an Answer Hiding Deep Inside My Heart

by parsnips (trifles)



Series: Tales of Love, Loss, and Insurance [27]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Doing Stuff to Avoid Thinking, Feelings Realization, Kissing, M/M, Multiverse, Owlet's This You Protect Bucky, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve freaks out, wombats
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 21:12:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11216367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trifles/pseuds/parsnips
Summary: Steve is having Feelings.





	Maybe There's an Answer Hiding Deep Inside My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is the world of [insurance-Bucky](http://triflesandparsnips.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3Ainsurance%21bucky). These are usually his stories.
> 
> wombat-Steve, however, needs a minute.
> 
> This chapter references [Compare and Contrast](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7363342?view_full_work=true) from this series.

You may not know this, but: a group of wombats is a ‘wisdom’.

\--

In a room on a floor in a tower in New York City, there are two portals to alternate universes. They’re about to shut down, leaving one Steven G. Rogers here with his best friend Bucky -– a man who, by most accounts, is basically a murder-bot with a weird fixation on health insurance.

(Steve himself has gotten weird about wombats. It was revenge at first, and then it was a coping mechanism, and now–-)

There’s a Bucky Barnes and a Steve Rogers in both those alternate universes. Steve doesn’t get to see the other-Steve from the universe where Bucky is quiet and sad and armless. Maybe he and that other-Steve would have a lot in common. Maybe that other-Steve watches nature documentaries, and likes Ovaltine better than coffee, and quietly worries about his Bucky in the middle of the night, when the wind skims the side of the Tower and it sounds like the high hum of bombs dropping over trenches. 

Maybe he and that other-Steve could’ve been friends.

And then-– there’s the other- _other-_ Steve. The one who _did_ come through a portal. The one whose Bucky baked and talked to himself and who, apparently-–

Apparently–-

Steve turns from the sight of a different Barnes and Rogers kissing in the common room, and stumbles blindly into the hall.

–-

Steve has never actually seen a wombat in real life.

Documentaries: yes. Photographs: also yes. A whole lot of youtube videos, consumed one after the other on nights when Bucky is holed up in his room, or in an air duct, or somewhere else out of sight. Those times tend to be while Bucky was off terrorizing insurance agents, or, in the last few weeks, while he was with his doppelgangers, sharing looks and information and family members and lousy jokes. 

Steve doesn’t exactly know what the Buckys talked about with each other. They tended not to say much in front of him. They all had a way of watching Steve when he came into a room, though, each with varying levels of attention. Bucky, his Bucky, is good with eye contact, but quiet. James was quiet, and would hold his gaze for a moment before looking to the side, slowly, trying to make his avoidance look natural. Barnes spoke the most of all of them, sort of, and his eye contact was–- direct. In more ways than one.

JARVIS let Steve know, sometime in the second week of there being three Buckys in the tower, that Barnes had requested a constant video feed of Steve’s activities. And then, around the fourth week, let Steve know that he now had a variety of small listening devices planted on his clothes and in his apartment.

Steve had gotten rid of them, but by the third time JARVIS had sighed and informed him that Barnes had once more managed to get into his rooms and planted a whole new set, he figured he’d just deal with it until it became a problem.

Standing out in the hallway, his heartbeat thick and skin hot against the cool air, Steve thinks now is a really good time for him to clear out those bugs once and for all.

–-

Wombats are marsupials. They look like guinea pigs crossed with badgers, they have backward-facing pouches for their young, and if a predator tries to follow them into their burrow, they let the intruder in a little way and then use their spine to break the predator’s skull up against the tunnel wall.

Wombats are pretty great.

Steve turns on his favorite documentary as background noise and sets about finding all the bugs in his and Bucky’s shared apartment. As he does so, he very, very definitely does not think about the following:

1\. Bucky.

2\. Barnes.

3\. Barnes and the other-other-Steve.

4\. Mouths.

5\. Hands.

6\. Bucky.

7\. _Bucky._

–-

“There’s another on the doorframe above Sergeant Barnes’s room,” JARVIS says partway through Steve mechanically removing all the stuffing from all the throw pillows.

 _Assess the situation, react accordingly,_ Barnes had said. A bug outside Bucky’s room. In case–- what?

Steve knows what.

Steve ignores JARVIS, and instead goes to remove all the shelving from the refrigerator.

–-

Does the Bronx Zoo have wombats? He should find out. It’s ridiculous, him never having seen a wombat in real life. Not with how weird he’s gotten about them. Not with all he knows, and keeps finding out, and how much he terribly, terribly  _wants._

–-

“You’ve found them all, Captain Rogers,” JARVIS says.

Yes, yes he has. And he’s destroyed them all, too.

Except one.

He sweeps a hand over the top of Bucky’s doorframe, his fingers feeling out the slight edge of the sticky bug against the smooth, level surface. There. He uses the edge of his nail to pry it up. It comes away intact, and then he’s standing there, in front of Bucky’s door, with a tiny listening device in the center of his palm.

“What do I do, JARVIS?” Steve asks quietly.

There’s a pause, and then-– “What do you want to do, Captain?”

–-

The television switches seamlessly from one program to the next as Steve’s front door slides slowly closed behind him.


End file.
